RSA Opening Minds » Roberts Blog

Left behind and losing out

saracandy — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:27:22 +0000

Left behind and losing out: the government’s failure of leadership on the digital revolution in education Three technology stories caught my eye during August. First a story in the TES: “The world’s ‘most wired’ nation, South Korea, expects to replace all paper textbooks with electronic tablets at its state-run schools by 2015.” TES 29th July More...

End of term curriculum scorecard

saracandy — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:56:48 +0000

The phone-hacking scandal masked the blizzard of announcements that poured out of the Department for Education shortly before schools broke up for the summer term. In case you missed them here is a summary of three key announcements relating to the curriculum – along with headline scores and comments on each of them. Revised professional More...

Time to confess – TES carries some important stories

saracandy — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 08:27:56 +0000

I have a confession to make. It does not quite rank alongside the mea culpae coming out of News Corp over the phone hacking scandal but I feel I should get something off my chest. So here goes. I am sorry to say that though I subscribe faithfully I do not read each and every More...

Levers and educational ends and means

saracandy — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:43:35 +0000

The former education secretary, Estelle Morris, made an interesting speech this week. Addressing school leaders at the National College for School Leadership conference in Birmingham she argued that politicians in England used four levers for shaping or controlling the direction of schools policy: Structures, where Estelle recognised that it was far too easy for politicians More...

Shared practice the route to better practice

saracandy — Tue, 24 May 2011 10:34:36 +0000

Last week I was re-reading the McKinsey report on how the world’s best schools system just keep getting better[1]. The report includes an interesting case study on Aspire schools – a group or chain of charter schools based in California. As they visited the different Aspire schools the McKinsey researchers noticed a striking similarity in More...

Co-operation – the word of the month

saracandy — Tue, 10 May 2011 09:59:45 +0000

There I was on holiday in the US in the town of Fredericksburg, just over 50 miles south of Washington DC. Profound thoughts about education, the curriculum and the future of schooling were furthest from my mind. After a pleasant meal at a local diner I was strolling back to my hotel with my wife More...

A primary challenge for Opening Minds

saracandy — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:35:53 +0000

Opening Minds is embarking on work with primary schools to test out what a competence-based curriculum might look like for primary-age children. With the primary sector’s more cross-cutting and discovery-based approach to teaching and learning we expect there to be a natural fit with how Opening Minds has evolved at Key Stage 3. There is More...

Curriculum and inspection

saracandy — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:23:45 +0000

– the latest Ofsted thinking Ofsted’s consultation document on its proposed new inspection framework has been welcomed in many quarters[1]. There has been general support for the idea of narrowing down the range of issues that are put under the microscope in school inspections. But the document contains some woolly thinking – particularly in relation More...

Progressive reform is coming

saracandy — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:50:39 +0000

Slowly but surely the building blocks for progressive curriculum reform are being laid. That may seem a bold statement given the narrow and ideologically-driven terms of reference for the Coalition Government’s current review of the National Curriculum. But two other developments during February give more cause for hope. First, the Royal Society published an authoritative More...

Learning = knowledge and skills

saracandy — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:02:27 +0000

Matthew Taylor, RSA Michael Gove is right to order a review of the National Curriculum. And it is also right to slim down the curriculum so that focuses it on outcomes rather than on the process of how subjects are taught. But the Education Secretary is wrong to focus the review solely on subject content More...